A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
